One Year, Six Months, Forever

When I was coming up a title for this blog, all I wanted was "One Year, Six Months," but it was taken by some person who hasn't posted since 2004.

I was bugged, and kept trying to think of what I could add to it so that I could make it work. "Sister One Year, Six Months"? No. "One Year and Six Months"? Taken.

I don't know when it hit me that I could do forever. Maybe "eternity" would have been the better Mormon word to use, but I like forever. I like the ring of it. Forever. For everything. For always.

How appropriate it is that I couldn't start this blog without the eternal in mind.I'm excited to serve a mission, yes, but these next few months will probably darn-near kill me as I finish up my papers and submit them. I'm hoping that this blog will be able to grow as I do, from "mission prep" to "Sister Missionary" and maybe even after, to old married fart with seven kids.

Because the thing that makes missions so incredible is that a mission is forever, and for ever. Once a missionary, always a missionary type of thing, but even more than that. As a missionary, you have the incredible opportunity to teach people about their divine, eternal potential. You can help families be sealed for all of time and beyond. You get to be a part of not just your forever, but so many others. You can never know how helping one person can help others; generations and generations of people can be born knowing the love of their Father in Heaven because you brought the message to their progenitors. For all of ever, as families are sealed together and then sealed to their ancestors and then their children, everyone can eventually be sealed to each other as parts of a billions and billions member family.

It makes a mission seem like a no-brainer, huh? To be so blessed to help others come to the joy of the Gospel, to watch the love of our Heavenly Father change a person, a home, is worth it in and of itself.

A mission (for girls) at this time is one year and six months, yes, but it's so much more than that. It's not putting your life on hold so much as it is donating it to others, giving others a chance to be forever just like you are. And no, you won't be a perfect missionary, even when you're at seventeen months and know every house within a twenty mile radius of the mission home. But that doesn't mean that you can't be a part of the perfection that is God's beautiful, glorious plan for us, His children, and a part of bringing it into someone else's life.

And, you know what? It doesn't take a missionary with a black name-tag to do that. You have a gift. You have a testimony. Share it.

So, that's what I'm doing with this blog. I made it because I was looking on Pinterest, actually, and jumping from sister missionary blog to sister missionary blog. Their stories are so inspiring to me, and so real. Missions aren't easy.

But I sort of wished that I could read the blog of someone like me, someone who still questions every day whether she should go on a mission, but keeps coming back to the thought that she has to, that there is someone out there in the world who needs to hear the Gospel from her.

Then I just decided to write it myself.

So, if you're like me and planning on serving a mission, or maybe you've already got your call and are waiting to report to the MTC, I hope this can be a place where we can strengthen each other. Right now there are more sisters than ever who are listening to the call to serve. I've never been prouder to join the ranks of sisters.

It's not just the US Armed Forces that's finally letting women take the front lines. It's everywhere. We only have eighteen months; we'd better make it count.